Arnold Schwarzenegger is back. Did he ever really go away? He’s back, baby, hitting his marks, reading his lines and glowering when he needs to glower for the camera. And I don’t mean a political comeback. There are some roads that you just can’t take again. Well, tell that to Newt Gingrich. No, I mean he’s back in Hollywood, silly! He’s got at least two hits on his huge hands with that other macho icon, Sylvester Stallone.

It was announced today that Arnold Schwarzenegger will star opposite Sylvester Stallone in the action/thriller THE TOMB, which will be directed by Swedish filmmaker Mikael Håfström. Production on this begins in the spring. Schwarzenegger and Stallone will next be seen on screen together in THE EXPENDABLES 2, which is currently in post-production and will be released this summer by Lionsgate. And Schwarzenegger just wrapped filming THE LAST STAND, produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura and directed by Jee-woon Kim.

And for those of us who were only aware of CRY MACHO, that appears to still be on! Have you checked out Arnie’s IMDb lately? The guy is busy.

Press release follows:

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER JOINS SYLVESTER STALLONE IN “THE TOMB”

MIKAEL HÅFSTRÖM SIGNS ON AS DIRECTOR

Los Angeles, CA – February 8, 2012 – It was announced today that Arnold Schwarzenegger will star opposite Sylvester Stallone in the action/thriller THE TOMB, which will be directed by Swedish filmmaker Mikael Håfström.

An Emmett-Furla Films/Mark Canton production, the film is produced by Atmosphere Entertainment chairman Mark Canton (300, IMMORTALS), Randall Emmett (LAY THE FAVORITE, RAMBO), George Furla (LAY THE FAVORITE, RAMBO), Robbie Brenner (MACHINE GUN PREACHER, A PERFECT GETAWAY), and Kevin King-Templeton (THE EXPENDABLES, RAMBO, ROCKY BALBOA). Emmett/Furla Films is financing the project. Summit holds worldwide distribution rights to THE TOMB and will release the film in North America.

Written by Miles Chapman for the screen, with a rewrite by Jason Keller, THE TOMB follows Ray Breslin (Stallone) who is the world’s foremost authority on structural security. He’s analyzed every high security prison and has gained a vast array of survival skills. But all Ray’s ingenuity and knowledge are about to be put to work in the most challenging test he’s ever faced: escaping from the master prison of his own design.

Schwarzenegger, in the role of Church, plays a complex inmate with multiple shades of grey. He’s the guy who fights to keep the prisoners from losing their humanity in their darkest hour as they struggle together to stay alive

THE TOMB, which Brenner had originally set up as a spec script at Summit will be shot in Louisiana this spring.

“I am thrilled to be making THE TOMB with two film icons – Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger,” said producer Mark Canton. “It is the perfect pairing for this high octane thriller. Robbie Brenner, Emmett/Furla, Kevin King-Templeton and I have been working long and hard with Summit to bring them together for this dynamic project.”

Schwarzenegger and Stallone will next be seen on screen together in THE EXPENDABLES 2, which is currently in post-production and will be released this summer by Lionsgate. Schwarzenegger just wrapped filming THE LAST STAND, produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura and directed by Jee-woon Kim.

Håfström recently directed horror film THE RITE starring Anthony Hopkins for New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. He also directed 2010’s SHANGHAI starring John Cusack; the Jennifer Aniston, Clive Owen thriller DERAILED; MGM’s 1408 starring John Cusak and Samuel L. Jackson, and the Swedish drama EVIL.

Schwarzenegger is repped by CAA. Håfström is repped by WME.

About Summit Entertainment

Summit Entertainment, a LIONSGATE® company, is a worldwide theatrical motion picture development, financing, production and distribution studio. The company handles all aspects of marketing and distribution for both its own internally developed motion pictures as well as acquired pictures. Summit also represents international sales for both its own slate and third party product.

About Emmett/Furla Films

Emmett / Furla Films, the Los Angeles based film production and financing company founded in 1998 by company principals Randall Emmett and George Furla, has quickly emerged as one of the industry’s most prolific production companies with the capacity to develop, package, finance and produce a broad array of films for wide theatrical release.

Founded in late 2003 by noted entertainment industry executive and producer Mark Canton, Atmosphere Entertainment MM, LLC, develops and produces theatrical motion pictures and television programming that will appeal to audiences throughout the world. Atmosphere’s latest film is Immortals, Relativity Media’s epic mythology-themed action adventure starring Henry Cavill, and directed by visionary filmmaker Tarsem. The film, which opened last November has grossed in excess of $200 million worldwide and is the third highest grossing R-rated film of 2011. Among Atmosphere’s recent successes are the mega-hit 300, The Spiderwick Chronicles, based on a series of highly popular children’s graphic novels and Summit’s romantic comedy Letters to Juliet, directed by the late Gary Winick and starring Amanda Seyfried, Vanessa Redgrave, Christopher Egan, Gael García Bernal, and Franco Nero.

In pre-production is The Battle of Artemesia, the companion to 300 which is written by Zack Snyder and Kurt Johnstad and will be directed by Noam Murro for Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. based on Frank Miller’s latest graphic novel; Young Caesar, based on the first of Conn Iggulden’s internationally acclaimed, best-selling novels, The Gates of Rome, which tells the story of a young Julius Caesar and Marcus Brutus, is adapted by Academy-Award® winner Bill Broyles and Stephen Harrigan and will be directed by Burr Steers; and Tunnels, to be directed by Vincenzo Natali for Relativity, which is expected to be the next sensation in the vein of “Harry Potter”.

In development are Spanking Shakespeare, which reunites Atmosphere with Spiderwick Chronicles producing partner Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Paramount Pictures, is an hilarious high school comedy about a kid with a funny name who has two things on his mind: getting into college and getting laid; and Play Dead, a fresh and riveting supernatural thriller about football player zombies bent on revenge in a football-obsessed Texas town, is being written by novelist and screenwriter Joe Schreiber based on Ryan Brown’s debut novel with Lucky VIII Films and Davids Canton Productions also producing.

About Kevin King-Templeton

For over two decades, producer Kevin King-Templeton has been associated with Rogue Marble Productions, the production company of writer, director and actor Sylvester Stallone. During his tenure he has found his forte in the action genre, producing projects with a global reach, from the remote jungles of Brazil and Thailand to the most cosmopolitan of cities. In addition to Stallone King-Templeton has worked with acclaimed acting heavyweights Robert De Niro, Bruce Wilis, Arnold Schwarzenegger,Harvey Keitel, Mickey Rourke, Michael Caine and Anthony Quinn.

The British-born King-Templeton has overseen some of the most astounding action sequences in motion picture history, including those shot on location in Bulgaria for the in the recently wrapped feature The Expendables 2. Directed by Simon West and starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Terry Crews, Liam Hemsworth Jean Claude Van Damme, Scott Adkins, Jet Li and Chuck Norris.

His additional credits a producer include The Expendables, directed by Sylvester Stallone and released

in 2010 to Number One at the Box Office; Bullet to the Head directed by Walter Hill and the latest installment of Rambo shot in the remote inner jungles of Burma, which continued the saga of the heroic Vietnam Vet John Rambo.

King-Templeton also produced Rocky Balboa a critical and audience success which definitively confirmed

both Sylvester Stallone and Rocky as iconic cultural symbols. Previously he produced Avenging Angelo and Driven and he also served as associate producer on Get Carter and the critically-acclaimed Cop Land for director James Mangold. For television he developed and produced a pilot for Paramount Pictures Television and The CBS Network entitled Father Lefty.